


Gone

by hrhrionastar



Series: The Honeyverse [29]
Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Episode: s01e22 Reckoning, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 09:14:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All D'Hara is in mourning for General Egremont and the little Rahl princess, Lady Nadina. But meanwhile no one is paying much attention to the new baby, and when Nicholas Rahl discovers that his sisters' nurse is missing, he will do whatever it takes to find her and reunite his surviving loved ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** _child death_ , other character death, serious illness, non-explicit sexuality, blood magic
> 
>  **Note:** This story is part of my Reckoning AU the [honeyverse](http://hrhrionastar.livejournal.com/84807.html#cutid1) (set in June 3024). Also it was written for the legendland hiatus challenge, for the generous prompt of a LotS AU ;D

_"The obverse side of caring for someone is that you can't stop caring when it hurts." –Barbara Hambly_  
  
"Is she sleeping?" Dacey asked. Her voice was loud in the eerie stillness of the nursery.  
  
Dacey was only five, much younger than Nicholas's mature almost twelve, and she couldn't see into the crib without standing on her toes.  
  
Nicholas reached down and waved his hand in front of the baby's face. She grabbed his index finger in one tiny fist. Her face was all scrunched up and red like she'd been crying, but he could still see her eyes. They were the same shade of blue as his own, his mother's, his sister Dara's, his sister Dacey's, and his sister Nadina's.  
  
Except that Nadina was never going to open her eyes again.  
  
On the other side of the crib, eight-year-old Dara had her hands on her hips. "Let's go," she said, tossing her honey-colored hair over her shoulder. "Babies are boring. And she's going to die, anyway."  
  
Nicholas looked down at his tiny newest sister in alarm, but she seemed all right. She wasn't even crying anymore. 'That's not true," he declared.  
  
"Everyone's saying it," Dara said defiantly.  
  
Nicholas got a queasy feeling in his stomach at the thought of everyone, or anyone, saying that the baby was going to die.  
  
He imagined someone repeating the rumor to Lord and Lady Rahl.  
  
But probably no one would dare say that to Nicholas's parents, even if it was true.  
  
Even if the baby did die, just like Nadina had.  
  
"Is she sick?" asked Dacey, gripping the fancy painted side of the crib and trying to peer closer at the baby. "She doesn't look sick…exactly."  
  
Nicholas was about to tell Dacey that they would definitely know if the baby was sick with the same plague that had killed Nadina, because she'd be coughing up blood and shivering like it was the middle of winter instead of June, but then Sarah came into the nursery.  
  
Sarah worked as a maid in the palace, and she was the sister of Lieutenant Andrews, who was a soldier in the Dragon Corps. She had a new baby too, called Jason, but he wasn't with her now. She strode toward the crib and then stopped when she saw Nicholas and Dara and Dacey.  
  
"What are you three doing here?" she asked. "Lord Nicholas, I know that you're supposed to be in lessons."  
  
"We wanted to see the baby," explained Dacey. "Sarah, is she going to die?"  
  
Sarah frowned, but she didn't say anything. She just reached into the crib and scooped Nicholas's littlest sister into her arms.  
  
Sarah sat down in Mother's favorite armchair by the fireplace. The fire was lit, even though the heat of the D'Haran summer had already begun to warm the stone walls of the palace, and sparks crackled merrily off the burning logs.  
  
Nadina used to love watching the fire. Nicholas had pulled her eager little hands away from the flames more than once.  
  
Nicholas only realized that he'd been staring into the fire when Dacey grabbed his hand and swung herself around him in a half-circle, pulling him sideways to face the now-empty crib, and Mother's armchair beyond it.  
  
The baby was cradled against Sarah's chest, nursing. Nicholas wondered if that meant Sarah's son Jason wasn't getting enough milk, because she was feeding his little sister too.  
  
He wondered if Mother would be upset when she found out someone else was nursing the baby.  
  
"We're all very sorry about Lady Nadina," Sarah was saying quietly to the child in her arms, "but that is no excuse for your mother. I know Alice isn't the sharpest dagger in the armory, but…whatever the queen said to her, poor Alice was crying so hard she could barely speak."  
  
Sarah looked up at Dara and Dacey. "And the way Lady Rahl is neglecting you girls is disgraceful," she complained.  
  
Nicholas knew that Sarah didn't mean anything by the things she said about Mother, but he was still glad that Father wasn't here to listen to them. He tucked his shoulder-length dark hair behind his ears, something he only did when he was nervous.  
  
Sarah looked from Dacey to Nicholas to Dara, and then down automatically, like she expected to see Nadina hanging onto Dara's hand. Nadina had turned a year old last December, and although she had already learned to walk, she hadn't always been steady on her feet.  
  
But what Sarah said next was, "Where's Becca?"  
  


* * *

  
The preceding winter had been a brutal one. Everyone in both the Midlands and D'Hara agreed that it was the coldest since the war had ended thirteen years before.  
  
D'Hara, more arid than the territory it had conquered, escaped the worst of the ice storms and blizzards that poured over the Midlands.  
  
But gradually, it became apparent that something just as deadly was sweeping through frozen, sunlit D'Hara.  
  
The plague was not magic: Lord Rahl's wizards were relentlessly detailed in their analysis, and there was nothing to show that the illness was artificially or deliberately caused, by either an old enemy or a new one.  
  
The disease did not even truly deserve to be called a plague, because although it affected many throughout the D'Haran Empire, there was no village left without survivors, and the victims most likely to die were the very old and the very young.  
  
But one fact kept terror alive in the People's Palace: magic had no affect on the plague at all. If it was not the cause of the illness, neither was it a defense against it.  
  
Nonetheless, Lord Rahl himself spent countless hours looking for a spell strong enough to protect his people from the plague and thus cheat fate.  
  
Lady Rahl prayed for the souls of the victims of the plague, even as she sent orders throughout the far edges of the empire concerning how best to care for the sick.  
  
All this feverish activity seemed to do some good; spring came, fewer people were dying, and all seemed well.  
  
But then General Egremont fell ill.  
  
Lord Rahl had hardly finished speaking before the crowd of mourners at the funeral of the man who had watched over him with the love and care of a father all his life when his youngest daughter caught the plague.  
  
Nadina Rahl was sixteen months old when she died.  
  
But although all D'Hara mourned the loss of their princess, it was the queen's abrupt withdrawal from the public eye that threatened to send the empire spiraling downward into chaos—or so her friends in the People's Palace feared.  
  
Lady Rahl was only recently risen from childbed, and this might have been thought to account for her virtual disappearance, except that the Healer pronounced her well—in body if not in spirit.  
  
The mourning that had descended like a dark cloud over the palace made it difficult for those that served the House of Rahl to take the time to help themselves, let alone one another.  
  
That the Rahl child born just days after Lady Nadina's death still lived was due more to the compassion of servants like Sarah than to any care from her parents, since Lady Rahl was never seen anywhere near the nursery and Lord Rahl was rarely far from her side.  
  
Under such circumstances, it was perhaps not surprising that Becca, the royal children's nurse, could have been missing for close to two months without anyone noticing other than her remaining charges, Lady Dara and Lady Dacey.  
  
Lord Nicholas would soon be going to Caldarin to train with the Dragon Corps, in the tradition of D'Hara; he would be taught the art of war side by side with the boys who would one day be his generals.  
  
Confessor he might be, but he was Lord Rahl's heir first, and this in part reconciled the D'Haran people to the danger of his Confessor touch.  
  
Becca was one of the few people who had never feared Lord Nicholas; she had watched over him as vigilantly and lovingly as his own parents, since his earliest days. Lord Nicholas was no longer in her care, but he could never forget her kindness to him in his childhood.  
  
Yet Lord Nicholas would have been equally horrified at Becca's disappearance and afraid for her safety had he only met her once.  
  
It was this compassion that had finally convinced Kahlan Rahl that her son was not a monster.  
  
It was also what filled Lord Nicholas with determination to find and rescue Becca, wherever she was.  
  


* * *

  
Nicholas found Father in his study. There was parchment scattered all over his huge desk, and several of the more dangerous magical books that he said Nicholas was too young to read.  
  
When Nicholas had asked when he _would_ be old enough, Mother had said 'never,' but Nicholas had already looked through some of them on his own. They were surprisingly dull, and hardly ever mentioned dragons, his current obsession and favorite magical creature. Supposedly dragons were extinct, but Nicholas refused to believe it.  
  
Father wasn't reading the books or the parchment, though. He was sitting in the window seat, glaring down at the courtyard below. His whole body was tense, as if he was just waiting for an enemy he could fight.  
  
He'd been like that since General Egremont's funeral.  
  
A week later they'd lost Nadina.  
  
If Father glared at the window any harder, the stained glass panes would probably shatter.  
  
Nicholas knew that the servants were terrified of Lord Rahl, and these days even the Council members scurried out of his way like frightened mice when he swept down the corridors. Nicholas could feel the aura of power that hovered around Father, like the way heat shimmered up off the flagstones during the summer, but somehow it didn't seem to affect him the way it did other people.  
  
"Becca?" Father said blankly, when Nicholas asked if he'd seen her. "Your sisters' nursemaid? Does she have the plague?"  
  
This horrible possibility had not occurred to Nicholas before.  
  
But, he reasoned, even if Becca were sick, she wouldn't have just vanished into thin air.  
  
He went to the conservatory next, because that was where you could usually find Mother when she wasn't with Father.  
  
But it was empty. There were rose petals all over the floor, and the orchids were drooping, like no one had watered them in a long time.  
  
Nicholas poured an entire cupful of water over the orchids' roots before he left the conservatory.  
  
In the throne room, he found Mistress Dahlia and Aunt Jennsen telling people that Lord and Lady Rahl 'understood their concerns' and would deal with the problem 'momentarily.'  
  
Nicholas wasn't sure whether 'momentarily' meant at any moment, or just very quickly, and it seemed the wrong time to ask.  
  
His parents' thrones were empty.  
  
Aunt Jennsen was fidgeting with her purple sleeve in an armchair from one of the staterooms, and Mistress Dahlia stood at her side.  
  
Aunt Jennsen was a Rahl, but she hadn't been raised with Father. She had only recently started coming to the throne room while Lord and Lady Rahl held court.  
  
Nicholas hadn't even known that Father had a sister until Dara was born. Aunt Jennsen and Dara were both pristinely ungifted.  
  
He remembered Aunt Jennsen being in the palace when he was younger, but she hadn't spent much time with him or with his sisters until he was about eight, which was probably about the time that Father had forgiven her for trying to kill him.  
  
Aunt Jennsen had fought on the side of the Resistance during the war. When Nicholas was four and Dara was just a baby, she'd snuck into the palace to start another rebellion by murdering Nicholas's parents.  
  
Nicholas wasn't supposed to know about that.  
  
Mistress Dahlia was the First Mistress of the Mord'Sith, though, and Nicholas had known her all his life. Now he noticed that, although she kept her face as impassive as ever, she had dark circles like bruises under her eyes.  
  
"Becca?" Mistress Dahlia said, in just the same blank tone that Father had used. She didn't say anything else, though, and Nicholas reflected with some indignation that at least Father had remembered who Becca was.  
  
"Why don't you ask your mother?" Aunt Jennsen said, but then she bit her lip and frowned.  
  


* * *

  
At the end of the day, Nicholas was no closer to finding Becca. No one he'd asked had seen her in the almost two months since Nadina's death. He couldn't remember seeing her in all that time himself.  
  
But she had to be _somewhere_. Nicholas was going to find her.  
  
He woke from somewhat restless sleep that night to find Dara and Dacey in his room.  
  
His cat, Garie, eyed them both with disfavor and leapt off the edge of Nicholas's bed.  
  
Dara had tugged the curtains open a little, so that moonlight shone on the floor, and she stood with her hands on her hips in the center of the room. Nicholas knew that she was waiting for him to light a candle.  
  
He concentrated, and the wick of the candle by his bed caught fire.  
  
Making things burn was one of the simplest spells, but Father said the strength and heat of the fire was directly proportional to the strength and control of the wizard. Lighting a candle was a lot easier than sending fire pouring out of your fingertips like the great wizards of old.  
  
Probably less painful, too, Nicholas thought, since wizard magic didn't protect its wielder from the effects of his own spells.  
  
Confession did. Confessors couldn't confess each other, or themselves, so Nicholas didn't have to be extra careful when Dacey climbed onto his bed and burrowed her head under his arm.  
  
And Dara was pristinely ungifted, so she couldn't be confessed either.  
  
Of course, being pristinely ungifted also meant that she couldn't light the candle the way Nicholas had, no matter how hard she tried.  
  
"What are you doing here?" Nicholas asked Dara crossly. "It's the middle of the night. Stay out of my room!"  
  
He didn't expect his sisters to leave, and neither of them even acknowledged his petulance.  
  
"Dacey can't sleep," Dara announced. "She's scared."  
  
"Am not!" Dacey said indignantly, but not very clearly. She had her face buried against Nicholas's nightshirt.  
  
"Becca's gone," Dara continued, "and Mother's—"  
  
She paused. There wasn't a good way to finish the sentence. Nicholas had seen Mother in the endless weeks since Nadina's death, unlike Becca, but she might as well have been missing too.  
  
She hadn't even noticed that Dacey was sleeping in Dara's room every night now.  
  
And she never came to the nursery to see the baby.  
  
"Do you think she's lonely?" Dacey whispered. She looked up at Nicholas, her eyes wide and dark in the meager light of the single candle.  
  
"Mother?" At first, Nicholas was confused. Or did Dacey mean the baby?  
  
"Nadina," said Dara, rolling her eyes as though it should be obvious. She drew out their missing sister's name, hitting each syllable as sharply as if her voice were a dagger.  
  
"She's in the crypts," said Dacey. "She's all alone."  
  
"No, she's not," Nicholas contradicted. He hugged Dacey close. "Nadina isn't in the crypts."  
  
Dara frowned. She was probably going to say that every Rahl was buried in the crypts. But Nicholas wasn't talking about Nadina's body.  
  
"Nadina is with the Creator," Nicholas said.  
  
Because it was what Mother would say.  
  
Because it was true.  
  
"But _why_ can't she be _here_?" Dara demanded. Her face crumpled suddenly, and she looked a lot younger than her eight years.  
  
Nicholas grabbed her hand and tugged her onto the bed. He hugged Dara and Dacey, and tried not to think that they might get sick just like Nadina.  
  
What if all his sisters died, and Nicholas was alone?  
  


* * *

  
Darken stood beside the crib, absently tracing the painted scrollwork of its sides. The crib was one of the oldest pieces of furniture in the People's Palace, dating from before the twenty-third century, almost a thousand years ago. Every one of Darken's children with Kahlan had slept here as an infant.  
  
This baby was their fifth child. She looked so small, wrapped in red silk and crying feebly. Darken picked her up and settled her against his shoulder. She weighed less than Nicholas's cat, and was far more fragile. She felt breakable in his arms, and even her cries were weak.  
  
She was too little; she had been born prematurely.  
  
The birth was etched in Darken's mind.  
  
Nadina's spirit had slipped away on a tide of blood and pain. Dahlia had given her the Breath of Life, but in moments death had come for her again, as the plague wound its cruel, relentless way through her small body.  
  
Kahlan had stood frozen, and then her face had twisted in agony as the labor pains began, much too early. After a hellish three days during which Darken feared for the lives of both his wife and child, she had borne this tiny daughter.  
  
Kahlan had not once so much as gone to see the baby since.  
  
Before the plague had come to D'Hara, Darken and Kahlan had chosen a name for their fifth child, but it felt wrong for Darken to use it when his wife had yet to acknowledge the baby at all.  
  
And he feared that they would lose this child too.  
  
It would not take a resurgence of the plague to strike down so tiny an infant.  
  
Darken was forcing himself to continue his search for a magical cure, although the task seemed hopeless; he had begun looking months before Nadina had even started showing symptoms, and before he had lost Egremont.  
  
He felt strangely lost and deeply unbalanced without the general, who had been his faithful companion ever since he was a child, and who had been by his side through war and danger, battle and change.  
  
Only his fear that the plague was not yet eradicated from the empire, and would return to steal the life of another person he loved, kept Darken looking for a cure at all.  
  
The plague had killed his daughter. Any magic powerful enough to stop it would come too late for Nadina.  
  
Darken hoped that there was no cure.  
  
His lips were set in a hard line, and he only realized that he had stopped rocking the baby against his shoulder when tiny fingers twisted in his hair.  
  
"At least you have a good firm grip," Darken said, shifting the child slightly in his arms. He saw that she had Kahlan's eyes, blue and wide and grave. "Your mother loves you," he said abruptly. "She does. And I love you. Your mother…she needs you to be strong."  
  
The baby fell asleep at last, and Darken kissed her forehead before tucking her back into the crib.  
  
The nursery seemed emptier without Nadina's bed. She had not been judged old enough to have her own room in the same wing of the palace, the way her elder siblings did.  
  
Now there was only the baby alone in the nursery. A servant should have been present to watch over her rest and report to the Healer at once if she showed any symptoms of the plague.  
  
Darken recalled that Nicholas had said the nurse was missing.  
  
Ordinarily it was a problem that Kahlan would have dealt with.  
  
Darken drew the white lace curtains back a little from the window and stood staring out at the night. The moon was up, and it cast a peaceful glow over the tall towers of the People's Palace and D'Hara's capital city.  
  
"All my life, I've wanted power," Darken said to the silence. "I have schemed and fought and killed for it. There was a time when I would have given my soul for the magic I now possess."  
  
In fact, Darken had given his soul for power.  
  
First to the Keeper, when he was still a young man, hardly more than a child. He had gained little from that bargain, and had finally broken it when he fought his way free of a magical poison meant to kill him by using his love for Kahlan and then-two-year-old Nicholas.  
  
And then to the Creator, when Kahlan had been possessed by the five-hundred-year-old spirit of the vengeful Queen Liviana Rahl. Darken had called out in desperation to whatever higher power might exist and might grant him the power to save Kahlan and Dara from Queen Liviana. _To Whom it may concern_ , he still thought of this. And the Creator had answered his prayer.  
  
Ever since that night, there was a peace in Darken's heart that never quite deserted him.  
  
Even Nadina's death had not brought the old darkness back, although Darken thought that it should have.  
  
"I have more power than I have ever had," Darken whispered. He dropped the curtain back into its place and let his eyes fall on the crib where his youngest child rested. "And it means _nothing_ if I cannot protect those that I love."  
  
Darken glared at the ceiling. Kahlan claimed that the Creator was everywhere, but it was still most convenient to think of Her as up there somewhere, out past the many stories of the People's Palace and above the clouds, smugly looking down on the mortal world and arranging it according to Her cruel whims.  
  
"Is that it?" Darken hissed bitterly. "Is that the _lesson_ You wanted me to learn?"  
  
The Creator did not reply.  
  


* * *

  
Nicholas began searching for Becca again the next day as soon as he was finished with his lessons.  
  
He couldn't concentrate on the War of the Bridges, even though it had been waged by one of his ancestors, Melchiorr Rahl. He was the same Melchiorr whose wife Queen Liviana had once possessed Mother. The dead queen's spirit had been trapped in her diamond tiara for five hundred years. Father had broken the enchantment, and now Dara had Liviana's tiara in her toy chest.  
  
This made the history more personal, but Nicholas still couldn't focus. His history tutor, Salvadore, gave him a pitying look and didn't reprove him.  
  
Salvadore had no idea where Becca was, though.  
  
Neither had Mrs. Millicuddy, the head cook. But she ruffled Nicholas's hair like she used to when he was little, and gave him a cookie.  
  
Gavin the wizard thought Becca might have gone to see her family, but Nicholas knew that she wouldn't have just left for her home in Caderyn without telling his sisters.  
  
Nicholas ran into his friend and agemate Ethan in the courtyard. Ethan was scuffing his feet against the cobblestones and looking bored. He brightened when he saw Nicholas.  
  
"What're you doing?" he wanted to know.  
  
"Looking for Becca," said Nicholas. "Have you seen her lately?"  
  
Ethan shrugged and shook his head. "So do you want to go sailing in the moat? You still have the raft General Egremont built for us, right?"  
  
He sounded so casual, like it meant nothing that General Egremont was dead and Becca was missing.  
  
Nicholas had to stay very still and listen to the inner Confessor for a moment.  
  
The inner Confessor was what Mother called the part of you that looked out at the world through your eyes but didn't feel your feelings. It was never scared or angry or lonely. It was what stopped you from confessing people without meaning to, and it was also the part of you that separated your soul from your powers. If you did not control the power of Confession, Mother insisted, then _it_ would control _you_.  
  
"Nicholas?" asked Ethan. He had stopped shuffling his feet.  
  
"I'm looking for Becca," Nicholas repeated.  
  
"You're no fun anymore," Ethan complained.  
  
Nicholas was honest enough to admit that this was true, but he was still furious.  
  
Ethan couldn't understand: he didn't have any siblings.  
  
Nicholas kept searching, only this time he decided to find someone who might actually know what was going on in the palace.  
  
Alice was Mother's maid, and a friend to both Sarah and Becca. She was quiet, but she paid attention. Mother complained that the only thing she knew how to do was arrange hair, but Nicholas disagreed.  
  
"Becca?" said Alice, when Nicholas asked the by-now familiar question. Her fingers twisted wrinkles in her skirt as she thought. "I saw her a few weeks ago."  
  
She looked away, and Nicholas knew that meant she was thinking about Nadina. He wanted to look away too, and pretend Nadina wasn't really gone, but he was a Rahl and he had to be brave, so he didn't.  
  
"She was going into the library," said Alice, and Nicholas remembered that they were talking about Becca. "I haven't seen her since."  
  


* * *

  
Kahlan was in the garden.  
  
She knelt among the flowers, blooming daffodils and crocuses and lilies strewn around her like living gems. The bright colors contrasted sharply with her plain black gown. The sun caught at the few pale strands of gray in her ebony hair as it tumbled loose down her back.  
  
It took Darken a moment to realize what she was doing.  
  
Kahlan was ripping the flowers up out of the ground as though they were weeds. Beside her lay a heap of dead blooms like executed prisoners.  
  
Darken was briefly jealous that at least she had something to kill (it was fortunate for them that no Midlander terrorists or treasonous lords or other would-be rebels had materialized in the chaos of the plague that had swept the D'Haran Empire) before he remembered that Kahlan would regret yanking the flowers up by their roots perhaps even more than he would have regretted slitting the throat of a loyal servant in the first fury of his grief.  
  
Kahlan loved the garden. Darken knew how her eyes would light up at the sight of a flowering azalea bush, how she treasured the scent of lavender, how she would rather have roses, thorns and all, than the most precious jewels in the world.  
  
Darken sank to his knees among the flowers and grasped his wife's wrists. "Stop!" he ordered. "Kahlan, _stop_."  
  
She met his eyes, and her face was the more terrible for its lack of tears.  
  
Darken couldn't remember seeing her cry since Egremont's funeral.  
  
"I don't understand," Kahlan whispered. "How could the Creator let her die? She was my little girl."  
  
"I don't know," Darken said hoarsely. It was as though the admission were wrenched from his throat.  
  
Kahlan stared at him. Her eyes were the same shade of blue as those of the child they'd lost.  
  
Darken thought of Nadina's brave spirit and prayed with his whole soul that she was with the Creator. He couldn't bear the thought of his daughter lost to the Keeper. But surely no matter how arbitrary the Creator's choices were, She would love Nadina, and protect her as her parents had not been able to.  
  
Darken saw the doubt in Kahlan's eyes and knew she was miserably unsure of her faith, but he had never needed to believe in a benevolent higher power more.  
  
Darken cupped Kahlan's cheek with one hand, brushing his thumb across where her tears weren't. "Come back to me," he begged. "The children need you. The baby needs you."  
  
Kahlan had begun to lean into the touch, but at that she twisted out of Darken's grasp and let her hair fall down so that it hid her face. "I can't," she said hopelessly.  
  
Darken felt bitter anger stir, like a snake shifting its coils. Did Kahlan think she was the only one who mourned? The only one whose pain was real?  
  
She hadn't been to the nursery since they lost Nadina. Life couldn't just stop here. The baby needed her mother.  
  
Darken needed his wife.  
  
Kahlan clawed at the ground with restless fingers, disarranging the heap of flowers she'd uprooted. "You think I want this?" she hissed.  
  
Guilt and bitterness swept over Darken, almost reassuring in their familiarity. Of course Kahlan had never wanted this life—had never wanted _him_. She had only married him for the sake of a desperate plan to be reunited with Richard.  
  
In that moment it didn't matter to Darken that she had changed her mind and told him the truth of his brother's survival and eventual return.  
  
It was a miracle that Kahlan loved him at all, after the many reasons Darken had given her to hate him.  
  
Of course she would still love Richard more.  
  
No doubt Kahlan imagined that if she had borne Richard's children the Seeker could have protected them from the plague.  
  
"No, I don't," Darken said, very quietly. There was self-loathing as well as sorrow in his voice.  
  
Kahlan looked up, her lips parting as if in surprise. She studied Darken for a moment, and then her eyes narrowed.  
  
"That's not what I—" she began, sounding exasperated. "Why do you always…I _want_ to want to care for the baby," Kahlan tried to explain. "But I can't let myself. I don't want to forget Nadina. I see her death over and over in my mind. If I were a better mother—" She broke off, biting her lip. "How can I go on when I know that once I let Nadina be no more than a memory I will have lost her forever?"  
  
Kahlan was almost hysterical now, but her voice settled into a dead monotone as she added, "I can't bear this."  
  
Understanding crystallized in Darken's mind like the instant ice freezes. The baby had been born just days after Nadina's death. Kahlan feared that if she let herself love the baby, that child would take Nadina's place in her heart.  
  
Darken put his arms around Kahlan and held her. He waited for her to weep, but instead she clutched his robes and her mouth sought his.  
  
Ever since the earliest days of their marriage, the sexual energy between Darken and Kahlan had been immediate and intense. That passionate connection did not desert them now. They took one another amid despair and guilt and dead flowers, and sought to forget the cruel world, if only for a moment.  
  


* * *

  
The library was empty.  
  
Nicholas searched every curtained alcove and behind every bookshelf. He even glanced at the ceiling, remembering how Father always said that danger came from the direction you least expected.  
  
Nicholas was about to give up and try somewhere else when he remembered the secret section of the library.  
  
There was no door, and nothing to show that this particular patch of wall was special in any way.  
  
There were other secret entrances and passages and rooms scattered throughout the palace, but most of them looked like ordinary doors to Dara, which meant they were only hidden by magic. The concealing enchantment couldn't affect her because she was immune to all spells.  
  
The secret section was different. There was no door. The place was not hidden, because without magic it simply did not exist.  
  
The door-which-was-not-a-door opened at the touch of Nicholas's Rahl palm.  
  
He wondered about that. Why was it that sometimes you had to cut yourself, and smear blood in the right spot, and other times it was like the magic could recognize you by your touch alone?  
  
The secret section was filled with books. But these weren't like the books in the rest of the library, or even the ones in Father's study.  
  
These books were heavy, with black covers and titles like _Necromancy_ or _Transmutation_ , when they had titles at all. Father had warned Nicholas that when you read them if you weren't careful _they read you back_.  
  
Only a Rahl could get into the secret section, because the entrance depended on the Rahl magic that hummed through Nicholas's veins.  
  
Sometimes he could hear his Rahl magic, slow and sweet like another heartbeat.  
  
Becca couldn't be here. She could never have gotten in at all.  
  
But Nicholas had looked everywhere else.  
  
He ran hesitant hands over the spines of the books, and thought about how few people could get into the secret section of the library. There was only Father, Nicholas himself, Dacey, Nad— _not_ Nadina, not anymore.  
  
Some of Nicholas's friends had bigger families than his, even if they had fewer siblings than he did. They had cousins and grandparents and lots of aunts and uncles.  
  
Nicholas had Aunt Jennsen, but Mother had lost her sister before Nicholas was born, and Father had lost his brother. Aunt Dennee was with the Creator, and Uncle Richard was just gone.  
  
Uncle Richard was coming back, though, someday, with Mistress Cara. Nicholas had heard a lot about her from Father and Mistress Dahlia, and he still thought of Mistress Cara more or less the same way he did the other heroes of childhood bedtime stories, like Cawfry, Hero of the Southern Isles, and Fafnir the Dragon Rider.  
  
Uncle Richard was also bringing the Boxes of Orden, which had to be destroyed. Mother said that they were sentient evil, and not like a person because they could never choose to be good. Nicholas knew that 'sentient' meant alive.  
  
The books in the secret section felt sentient somehow, too.  
  
Nicholas could hear them, more in his mind than in his ears. There was a sound like the hiss his cat, Garie, made when Ethan had stepped on her tail, and another that jangled like a box full of Creatormas bells, and underneath that the persistent 'scritch, scritch' of a quill on parchment.  
  
Nicholas listened harder, trying to separate out the individual sounds.  
  
There was one book that had two competing noises—one was a sort of wet slither, like a waterlogged cloak on stone, but the other was a scream that sounded like it was coming from far away.  
  
Nicholas took the screaming book from the shelf and sat down cross-legged on the wooden floor with it in his lap.  
  
There was no title, just a drawing of a grinning white skull on the dark cover. Nicholas took a deep breath and made sure that the inner Confessor was keeping his emotions firmly separated from his hands on the book.  
  
Then he opened it.  
  
The pages were yellow with age, but still easy to turn. The writing was in ancient runes, which Nicholas had never been particularly good at reading, but there was the occasional illustration—mostly sketches of people writhing and screaming. If Nicholas didn't look at them directly, they seemed to move.  
  
And then, near the center of the book, there was a picture that really did move, fists flailing and mouth opening and closing without any sound.  
  
It was Becca.  
  
And it _was_ her, Nicholas knew. Not just a drawing. It was really Becca, and she was trapped inside the book!  
  
Frantic, he forced himself to think. How could he rescue Becca? What would Father do?  
  
He thought about running to find Gavin, who was a wizard and presumably knew about people getting stuck in books, but he couldn't just leave Becca here.  
  
In the end, Nicholas did the only thing he could think of: he cut his palm open with his dagger and let the blood seep into the page. The book absorbed it greedily, and Nicholas concentrated, sending his thoughts to follow his blood into the world of the slithery book.  
  
After an endless time spent searching, Nicholas found Becca. He pulled at her with the imaginary echo of his hands, knowing that if he lost her now he'd never find her again.  
  
Nicholas opened his eyes. His vision was clouded, but he could tell he was still in the secret section of the library. The book with the grinning skull on the cover was thankfully shut, and beside it sat Becca, her legs drawn up to her chest under her biscuit-colored skirts and her hand over her mouth.  
  
"Lord Nicholas," she said. "What happened?"  
  
"You were in that book," explained Nicholas. "How did you get trapped in there? Why were you in the secret section? How did you get past the entrance?"  
  
For answer, Becca pulled a handkerchief out of the pocket of her skirts. The blood had dried, stiffening the cloth.  
  
"This handkerchief was one of the ones Lady Nadina coughed into," said Becca. "I took it down here so I could find a cure for her. That book is full of poison spells, so I thought it might have an antidote—something to fight the plague." She shook her head, and her pale hair fell around her shoulders.  
  
Then she looked at Nicholas and asked the question he'd been dreading. "How is Lady Nadina? She's all right, isn't she?"  
  
Nicholas shook his head.  
  
He bit his suddenly trembling lip, and tasted blood. And then the whole story of the past weeks came pouring forth—Nadina's death, the baby, how terrified he was for his mother because he never saw her anymore, how Dara had said that the baby was going to die.  
  
"Almost two months since I came here," marveled Becca, even as she hugged Nicholas and rocked him like a much younger child.  
  
"I blame myself," Becca said tightly. "I should never have left Lady Nadina. But I thought, if only I could find a way to heal her, then maybe…"  
  
"It's not your fault," Nicholas managed to say in spite of the lump in his throat. "There was no way to heal Nadina. If there was, Father would've saved her."  
  
It was the right thing to say; Becca relaxed a little as the truth of Nicholas's words sank in, and then she got carefully to her feet. "We should go," she said, looking around at the secret section with a frown. "It's not safe here."  
  
Nicholas rubbed at his face with his sleeves, reminding himself that he was almost twelve and much too old to come crying to Becca.  
  
He realized that he had not been afraid of the secret section or its contents, even when using his magic to rescue Becca from the slithery skull book.  
  
She was right about the danger, but nothing could frighten Nicholas more than his own Confessor powers. He'd always known that they might cost him his family.  
  
It was only now that he understood that there were other ways he could lose his loved ones.  
  


* * *

  
"You!" Mistress Dahlia swept toward Nicholas, her heels clicking insistently on the hard stone floor. She stopped just in front of him, ignoring Becca completely, and ordered, "Come with me."  
  
Nicholas glanced at Becca, but he knew she'd be okay now that she was free of the poison book. He followed Dahlia down the corridors, surprised and pleased to find that he was tall enough now that she didn't have to adjust her steps to his.  
  
"Where are we going?" Nicholas demanded.  
  
"Lord and Lady Rahl require your presence," Mistress Dahlia said, so grimly that Nicholas was worried.  
  
"Is something wrong?"  
  
An instant later he realized how silly that question sounded, but it didn't matter; they were at the door of Father's study.  
  
Mistress Dahlia took him inside and left without a word, shutting the door behind her.  
  
Mother sat in the window seat, her elbow resting on her knee and her chin in her hand. She stared at nothing, and didn't turn to greet Nicholas.  
  
Father was pacing the floor, his robes snapping and furling out with every step. "Where were you?" he demanded. His voice had the same harsh sharpness of Dara's when she was upset and didn't mean to admit it. "You've been missing since yesterday. Your mother was worried."  
  
Yesterday? Confused, Nicholas thought back to the endless time he'd spent searching for Becca in the book. He realized he was hungry; the cookie Mrs. Millicuddy had given him seemed a long time ago.  
  
Nicholas tucked his hair behind his ears. Father caught his wrist and turned his palm to the colored pink and green sunlight streaming in from the stained glass window. The blood on his hands had dried, making the cut look worse than it was.  
  
"I'm fine," Nicholas hurried to reassure Father. "I had to rescue Becca." And then he was explaining everything—how Becca had gotten lost in the book, but he had figured out what to do. He was excited, his words racing over one another as he spoke.  
  
Father's dark blue eyes shone with pride in his initiative, and Nicholas started to think everything was going to be all right.  
  
As Nicholas finished his story, though, he couldn't help glancing at Mother. She was still in the window seat, the contrast between her black dress and pale skin making her look eerily, almost frighteningly beautiful.  
  
Father was watching her, too, and he was frowning. Then he met Nicholas's gaze and held it, his eyes widening slightly.  
  
Nicholas caught both the look and its meaning. He went over to Mother and put his arms around her shoulders. For a moment she stayed tense and stiff, but then she breathed out in a tiny sob and hugged Nicholas fiercely to her.  
  
Father glanced at the ceiling, but he wasn't rolling his eyes the way Mistress Dahlia did sometimes when he wasn't looking. It was more like he expected the ceiling to be sentient enough to meet his gaze.  
  
Nicholas stole a reassuring touch of the smooth coils of Mother's long hair.  
  
She sniffed, grasped his wrist, and let him go in order to pull out her handkerchief, touch it to her lips, and use the white scrap of cloth to rub the dried blood from his palm. Then she kissed the cut.  
  
Nicholas was far too old to think a kiss from his mother could heal his hurts.  
  
It soothed him anyway.  
  
"Now," said Mother, in a husky voice that sounded like tears tasted, "let's go and see the baby."  
  


* * *

  
They found Dara and Dacey in Dara's room. Dacey was making her blocks dance in the air with her magic, while Dara spun Queen Liviana's tiara between her fingers.  
  
Neither of them asked any questions when they saw Nicholas and Father and Mother. Dacey let her blocks fall the floor and hugged Mother, and then she took Father's hand too and walked between them, making everyone go at her slow pace. Dara put on the tiara and strode into the lead, and Nicholas kept up with her.  
  
Suddenly he couldn't wait to see the baby, and underneath his excitement was fear that she wouldn't be there—that during the day and night he'd spent searching for Becca, someone else would have disappeared from his life, the way first General Egremont and then Nadina had.  
  
But the baby was still there, crying in Becca's arms.  
  
"Becca!" Dacey shrieked, letting go of Mother and Father to throw herself at her nurse. Dara was there an instant later, and Becca swayed like she was losing her balance.  
  
"Girls!" Father said, in the tone that no one, Nicholas thought, could possibly disobey.  
  
Mother had already hurried to Becca, holding out her arms. The baby stopped crying when Mother held her carefully against her chest. Mother shut her eyes.  
  
Becca was trying to answer Dacey's eager questions as the little girl bounced around her excitedly. Dara hadn't let go of her nurse yet, but she didn't say anything. Nicholas just watched, feeling relieved and proud that he'd rescued Becca—all by himself, too.  
  
"I'm sorry, my lady," said Becca, gesturing at her loose hair and crumpled, bloodstained skirts. "But I had to come right away—I wanted to meet the baby. What's her name?"  
  
Just then more people came in, with trays full of food that made Nicholas's mouth water. Father must have given orders, Nicholas thought as he waited for the servants to set everything out on the low table near the wall.  
  
Nadina had bumped her head against that table when she was learning to walk, he remembered suddenly. She'd cried and cried, until Father had used his magic to send the pain away.  
  
The memory hurt, but Nicholas also knew that he didn't want anyone to send _this_ pain away. He didn't want to forget his sister.  
  
Father put an arm around Nicholas's shoulders. He didn't say anything, but Nicholas didn't mind. They both watched Mother and the baby.  
  
"Her name," said Mother, answering Becca's question at last, "is Melantrys."  
  


* * *

  
It was much later; the sun was setting, its last brightly colored rays falling on the floor of the nursery. The remains of whatever meal it was they'd eaten—too late for lunch and too early for dinner, not that Darken let his behavior be dictated by something so prosaic as mealtimes—still lay on the side table. The children's nurse, whom Nicholas had rescued from _The Brewing of Virulent Poisons_ , as well as the other servants, had gone. Only Darken and Kahlan and the children remained in the room.  
  
Kahlan sat in the armchair closest to the fire, baby Melantrys sleeping in her arms. Dacey was curled up at her feet, while Nicholas leaned against the arm of Darken's chair. Dara sat with her back against the wall, far enough away from her parents that she seemed to be exerting her independence.  
  
She had once told Darken that hugging and crying was stupid. He had been surprised to realize he disagreed.  
  
Now he was torn between admiration of Dara's stern resolution and a selfish wish that his daughter would come to him for comfort.  
  
It was Dara who broke the long silence.  
  
"Will Melantrys miss Nadina?" she asked.  
  
"How can she?" said Nicholas, sounding worried. "She never knew Nadina."  
  
Kahlan, whose eyelids had been drooping, now met Darken's gaze, her own suddenly stricken.  
  
"She can," Darken asserted firmly. "She will."  
  
"How?" demanded Dacey.  
  
"Because," Darken said to the fear in Kahlan's eyes, "we'll tell her about Nadina. Your sister may be gone, but we'll never forget her. She will always be in our hearts."  
  
He looked at Nicholas and Dara and Dacey in turn, drawing them in they way he did when telling them stories to keep Nicholas from interrupting with questions and Dara from interrupting with disapproving strictures on the folly of all heroes.  
  
"Do you think you can help Melantrys to know Nadina?" Darken asked them. All three children nodded. Darken took a deep breath. "Then I want to tell you," he said slowly, "about your brother."  
  
Questions burst forth. Only Kahlan was silent, Melantrys cradled against her breast and a deep sympathy in her face as she watched Darken.  
  
She knew the story of Sam's death, of course. Sam, the son Cara had borne Darken, the bastard first child he had sent away, reasoning that his world was no place for a baby.  
  
Sam had died just weeks before his fifth birthday, when the Resistance blew up a Dragon Corps training facility.  
  
It was that more than anything else, Darken now realized—more even than the prophecy of his own death at the hands of the Seeker, his envied and despised little brother—that had made Darken scorn the idea of making peace with his enemies when Egremont had suggested it.  
  
And then Cara and Richard had disappeared, and Darken had married Kahlan, and Nicholas had been born at least a year too late ever to know Sam.  
  
Darken had never told his children about Sam's death, and he didn't now, beyond saying 'yes' when Dacey asked if Sam was with the Creator just like Nadina. He told them about Sam's life, brief as his own glimpses of it had been.  
  
Kahlan kissed Melantrys's forehead as she listened, and with the kiss some more of the tension that had frozen her since Nadina's death seemed to melt away in the warm crackle of the fire.  
  
She had wept during Egremont's funeral, Darken recalled. The general would be deeply missed by the Rahl family as well as his own.  
  
Darken hoped that Kahlan saw now that loving Melantrys didn't mean forgetting Nadina. It was she who had taught him that opening your heart to someone meant that it was not only possible to love more: it was inevitable.  
  
And despite the sorrow that threatened to overwhelm him in the wake of his losses, Darken was deeply grateful for the lesson.

**Author's Note:**

> _A note about magic:_
> 
>  
> 
> My theory is that male Confessors are incredibly powerful and that's why they're usually evil; in this AU Kahlan has spent a lot of time teaching Nicholas to control his powers, and like all Confessors he has to restrain himself from confessing people all the time.
> 
> But he also has some wizard power inherited from Darken; the references to his being able to 'hear' magic are based on the theory that as some wizards have second sight, so others might have second hearing.
> 
> And then there is the Rahl magic, which is what Nicholas uses to rescue Becca. The books in the secret section probably include whatever record survives of how the Rahl Bond was created in the first place.
> 
>  
> 
> _The children's ages:_
> 
>  
> 
> Reiterated for the sake of clarity: Nicholas is about to turn twelve, Dara is eight, Dacey is five, Nadina died when she was sixteen months old, and the baby is now a bit less than two months old.
> 
>  
> 
> _The Rahl family tree:_
> 
>  
> 
> [link](http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad256/hrhrionastar/lots115_1375-2-1-1-1-2.jpg)


End file.
